The Spring Festival is a ceremony to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new, and it is also a warm local memory. Paper-cutting, shadow puppetry, dragon dances, lion dances... How to celebrate this festival, in the development of thousands of years of history, has formed some relatively fixed customs, many of which have been passed down to this day. In the traditional Customs of the Spring Festival, window stickers are an indispensable one.
There is a folk saying that "on the twenty-eighth day of the Waxing Moon, the noodles are haired"; "on the twenty-eighth day of the Waxing Moon, the steamed steam Window flowers are paper cuts pasted on window paper or window glass, one of the ancient Han traditional folk arts in China. It has a long history and unique style, and is loved by people at home and abroad. The Tang Dynasty poet Song Zhi asked Shi Yun: "This year's spring is early, it should be urged by scissors"; Li Shangyin's poem said: "Gold is better than passing on the customs of Jing, and cutting green is the wind of people". Guo Moruo also has a poem: "A cut of cleverness captures the divine skill, and the beauty is immortal in the folk."
In ancient times, people would regard window flowers, New Year paintings, and spring unions as a kind of peach charm, which had the effect of warding off evil spirits, and only later when papermaking was born, red paper was used instead of peach wood. Now, the significance of the window flower lies more in good wishes, and the blessings of the New Year are auspicious. The window flowers are mostly themed with auspicious patterns such as magpie Dengmei, deer crane Tong Chun (six contract spring), five bat (Fu) Bo Shou, lotus (Lian) Nian Youyu (Yu), Mandarin duck playing water and He'er Immortal, etc., and the red window flowers are pasted in the cleaned house to add to the joy. The brilliant colors, auspicious patterns, and peculiar ideas all convey people's sincere wishes for a prosperous life, prosperity and well-being.
Window flowers mostly use unique generalizations and exaggerations to express auspicious events and good wishes, with different styles and free styles. The south is beautiful with "delicacy", which is characterized by exquisite clarity; the north is beautiful with simplicity and vividness, which is characterized by innocence and thickness. Whether it is the south or the north, the countryside or the city, during the Spring Festival, most of them should paste window flowers to decorate the environment, render the atmosphere, and pin their good wishes on the old and the new.
The folk role of window flowers is the most concentrated, not only beautifying the living environment, but also pinning on the pursuit and desire for life ideals. Praying for a prosperous life, prosperous future generations, a prosperous life and a good life, and warding off evil spirits and welcoming good fortune are the most expressed themes of window flowers, reflecting the ancient and rich cultural connotation of window flowers. It can be seen from the window flower styles circulating in the Jiangnan region that the window flowers represent the artistic language of paper-cutting more than other paper-cutting styles. The craft characteristics of window flower paper-cutting have surpassed the simple decorative function of folk activities, thus changing the development pattern of a single form of paper-cutting. For example, Gansu's relief window flower paper-cutting, using the process of paper tying; Hebei's dyed window flowers borrow from folk painting; Nantong's silk fabric window flowers organically combine paper and textiles. Window flower paper-cutting, as a kind of folk activity of the festival, not only beautifies the residential environment, but more importantly, becomes the object of people's aesthetic exchanges.
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Editor-in-charge: Jia Tingyi